


i keep crawling back cause i’m sick for your love

by dumblesbianenergy



Series: no one ever taught you how to love right [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kuron (Voltron) Mentioned, Maybe - Freeform, Maybe I’ll write a happy part three, Physical Abuse, Pidge Angst, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, SHIDGE, Sad Ending, Sad Pidge | Katie Holt, Sad Shiro (Voltron), Shidge angst, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, dumblesbianwrites, sad fic, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 04:54:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17595008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumblesbianenergy/pseuds/dumblesbianenergy
Summary: shiro is back. the real one, this time. or is he? pidge isn’t sure what’s real anymore.





	i keep crawling back cause i’m sick for your love

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn’t satisfied with where the last part ended, so i wrote a part two to explore what shiro’s reaction might be. enjoy - el

shiro has a feeling. an ugly, sad feeling that gnaws at the inside of a body he only just got back. he wishes he could just ignore it, but he knows it’s too late for that. he’s never been more certain of anything in his life - this one and the last one.

pidge doesn’t trust him. and it’s his fault.

well, not his fault exactly, but the person that did this to her had the same face and body and voice as him, and shiro thinks it’s probably the same. he doesn’t want to ask pidge what the other shiro did to her, but he thinks he might have to. so he asks to stay with her in the green lion when the paladins choose passengers for the long journey home. they must assume it’s that fatherly instinct shiro has for pidge. they have no idea what’s really happening. they never did.

“pidge.” 

shiro does not receive a reply - not even a nod or a glance. he sighs and tries again.

“katie.” this time, she turns around. a little too fast, and her fingers seem to be reaching for her bayard, which is weird, because recently pidge has had an aversion to using her weapon. shiro wishes he knew why.

“how many times have i told you not to call me that?” her tone is too sharp, too icy and cold. shiro’s feeling is right; something is very wrong here.

“probably almost as many times as i’ve called you it.”   
she doesn’t laugh, and his weak attempt at humour just creates a suffocating atmosphere between them. he can barely breathe.

“look, we need to talk. something happened while i was... absent, and i can tell you’re having a hard time being around me. please, just let me know what’s going on.” 

“i don’t know what you’re talking about.” pidge replies, too fast to be natural and they both know it.

“nothing’s wrong, okay? it’s all fine. you’re just overreacting. i don’t have a problem with you.”

shiro sighs heavily and moves in front of her seat, making sure no other paladin is listening in on their conversation. 

“katie, you won’t even look me in the eye.”

this is what finally garners a reaction from the small girl. she starts suddenly, as if she just realised what she was doing, and stares furiously into his eyes with a fiery gaze. shiro wonders when she got so angry.

“what did i do?” 

his question leaves her confused - it leaves him confused too. taking a gentle seat on the console of the green lion opposite her, he rephrases.

“not me. not completely. i mean the other me. the clone. what did he do to make you so afraid of me?” shiro tentatively prods, cursing his voice for breaking mid sentence and betraying his pent up feelings. pidge stares, like this is the first time she has seen him visibly emote. the thought of a robot shiro makes him shiver.

 

“i don’t know what you’re talking about.” she responds automatically, like she has been asked this question so many times its meaning has been lost to her. shiro closes his eyes for a moment, and shakily exhales a breath. when he opens his eyes, pidge is on the verge of tears. he goes to speak, but she interrupts.

“katie-“

“i knew he wasn’t you.” she begins, and shiro frowns, because all the other paladins call his clone ‘it’, because it wasn’t human. 

“it only took me a few days to figure it out. i was going to tell everyone, but they were all so happy to have you back... i couldn’t do that to them.” 

shiro nods in understanding, wishing pidge wasn’t so damn clever for her own good.

“i tried talking to him, i-i tried fighting him but...” she trails off, leaving shiro to fill in a gap he doesn’t want to fill.

“he was too strong. he got inside my head, made me think things that weren’t true- or they were true- i don’t know anymore-“

shiro cuts her off by gently placing a hand on her knee. pidge balks, afraid of his touch, but she doesn’t move away. he doesn’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.

“you fought him.” he affirms, receiving a tiny nod in response. “did he.. did he hurt you?”

shiro is already certain of the answer. living together in the green lion meant seeing her naked - not that it was an unfamiliar sight - and he had recognised the ugly purple bruises that painted her body. she had noticed him staring so he turned away, pretending he couldn’t see the shiro like hand prints the bruises formed.

“no.” pidge lies, and it is clear they both know she’s lying. 

“are you sure?” shiro asks simply, squeezing her thigh.

pidge bursts into tears.

she was never a pretty crier. she has always wailed and screamed herself hoarse, tears and snot pouring down her scrunched up face while her tiny fists hit whatever was in range. this time is no different. she lets out a broken noise that sounds like a battle cry, and physically falls apart. shiro resists the temptation to put her back together again. 

he lets her cry, grateful for the privacy of the green lion so no one else could hear her loudly sob. except him. it hurts so much to see her in pain, and part of him thinks to himself that he deserves it.

seconds or minutes or hours pass; shiro isn’t sure. all he is sure of is eventually pidge’s screams quieten and her breathing slowly evens out. she unfurls her body from its defensive crouch and reaches out to shiro, almost, so he takes the hint and scoops her up into his lap, replacing her seat with himself.

“i don’t want to ask if you’re okay.” he starts slowly.

“why?” her reply comes out as a hiccup, and shiro would’ve laughed if he was capable of it at the moment.

“it’s a stupid question.” 

“ask it anyway.” pidge has never been one to order shiro around - it was always the other way around. not wanting to upset her further, he acquiesces.

“are you okay, katie?”

“no.” is her dead response, and it feels like being stabbed. he wants to fix what the other him broke, but there is so much damage he doesn’t know where to start.

“what did he do?” he asks again, softer but more forceful this time. pidge has to swallow before she can reply.

“he kissed me. a lot. i kissed him back. he called me katie and he cared about me and he made me think he was you. i knew the truth. i knew he wasn’t you. but it hurt so much that i pretended the lie was real.”

her answer is so much worse than he could have anticipated, because it confirms shiro’s suspicions. it really was him that did all that to her, because if she was convinced there was no difference, there really wasn’t one. he wants to call her katie, to comfort her with her name, but it’s not really her name anymore. it belongs to the other him that stole it from her.

“pidge, i’m-“

“don’t say sorry.” she says, with a tight lipped voice and arms that wrap tightly around his neck.

“what do you want me to do?”

“kiss me.” 

it’s such a pidge like request that he can’t say no; he shifts her on his lap and leans in to press his lips to hers. he convinces himself that she doesn’t try to pull away; that her touch feels like it used to; that the feeling deep inside is wrong, because shiro isn’t sure what to do if it is right.


End file.
